This article series highlights the requirements for determining Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) eligibility. The last installment focused on the requirements that are used to determine FMLA family care, now we’ll look at determining in loco parentis status.
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The FMLA’s definition of a “parent” or “son or daughter” was intended to be construed to ensure that an employee who actually has day-to-day responsibility for caring for a child is entitled to leave, even if the employee does not have a biological or legal relationship to that child.
In loco parentis status is commonly understood to refer to “a person who has put himself in the situation of a lawful parent by assuming the obligations incident to the parental relation without going through the formalities necessary to legal adoption.”
According to a Administrator Interpretation #2010-3, issued by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), “[t]he key in determining whether the relationship of in loco parentis is established is found in the intention of the person allegedly in loco parentis to assume the status of a parent toward the child.”